Register now for the Center’s Conversations Transcontinental conference at the Brigham Young University Museum of Art in Provo, Utah, on March 29–30, 2019. The two-day event coincides with the opening of the Center’s new After Promontory exhibition and publication of a 320-page book of the same title. Visit the conference page for more information and to submit your registration.

We’ve recently posted an album of highlights from the Thomas F. McIlwraith Collection. Shot primarily while McIlwraith was a PhD candidate at UW-Madison, the collection includes great documentation of the Milwaukee Road and Chicago and North Western in the Midwest during the 1960s. In this McIlwraith photograph, one of the Milwaukee Road’s Skytop observation-lounge cars brings up the rear of the “Morning Hiawatha” passenger train as it departs Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for Chicago on Saturday, November 12, 1966. The car is passing under “tell tales” (hanging wires used to warn workers riding car tops) for the Menomonee River drawbridge, visible at right. View the whole album here: http://www.railphoto-art.org/collections/mcilwraith/

A new album from our Victor Hand Collection is available online. This selection features the Erie Lackawanna Railway and includes this image of passenger train no. 1203 at West End (Jersey City) New Jersey, on May 26, 1966. You can visit the gallery page here: http://www.railphoto-art.org/collections/victor-hand-collection/

Victor Hand Collection Overview

Planned Gift of Victor Hand

Approximately 46,000 images, mostly black-and-white and color negatives, many of the 4×5 and medium format size

Digitization in progress; approximately 25% complete

Portraits and action views of diesel and steam locomotives from the 1950s to 2000s

Extensive coverage of diesel in the United States, extensive coverage of international steam operations in approximately 36 countries, including France, Mexico, Spain, Germany, South Africa, India, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and others

John Gruber, founder of the Center for Railroad Photography & Art, died on October 9, 2018. His influence on the field of railroad photography is impossible to overstate, from his own paradigm-shifting black-and-white work beginning in the 1960s to his 2018 book that reexamines the lives and photography of Lucius Beebe and Charles Clegg. Beyond his own luminous work, Gruber shined a spotlight on other notable photographers while also encouraging young and emerging practitioners. Classic Trains magazine dubbed him a “provocateur of railroad photography” in a 2014 profile by Kevin Keefe. There would be no Center without Gruber’s vision and tireless efforts, and all of us here stand always on his shoulders. Photograph by Henry A. Koshollek

Save these dates for our 2019 conferences. The schedule is different than usual due to the sesquicentennial of the completion of the nation’s first transcontinental railroad and programming related to our After Promontory project.

Conversations Transcontinental will be held March 29–30, 2019, at the Brigham Young University Museum of Art in Provo, Utah, in conjunction with the opening of our After Promontory exhibition. Registrations will open on January 2, 2019.

Conversations 2019 will be held September 13–15, 2019, at Lake Forest College in Lake Forest, Illinois, thirty miles north of Chicago. Registrations will open on May 1, 2019.

Check back here for more details, including information about possible additional events in conjunction with other venues hosting our After Promontory exhibition.